Saturday, September 6, 2014

More on "The Architect" (And by Architect, I Mean Role-Model For Subsequent Mass-Murderers)

The individual who was ultimately responsible for Lenin was Lenin. But a good case could also be made (and was, in Jim Powell's provocative book, "Wilson's War") that if it wasn't for Wilson, Clemenceau, and the rest of those idiotic Allied leaders who pressured and literally bribed the Provisional Government (which actually had some Democratic elements to it) into staying in the war and thereby causing chaos all throughout Russia, Lenin probably wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell of ever rising to power in the first case....Let's just call it yet another pitch-perfect example of the unintended consequences of war.

Or, Les, perhaps Russia would have been far far worse if Trotsky had taken the rains of that constant socialist bloodbath:

"As bad as Stalin was, it's possible that Russia and world would have been even worse off had Trotsky defeated him in the late 1920s. After all, Trotsky broke with Stalin in the 1920s in large part because he thought Stalin wasn't going far enough in repressing "bourgeois elements," collectivizing agriculture (which eventually led to an even bigger deliberately engineered famine in the early 1930s), and promoting communist revolution abroad. ... Had Trotsky won, life would have been better than under Stalin for members of the Communist Party; Trotsky was less interested in purging the party comrades. But it might have been even worse for everyone else."

I wouldn't say that guys like Trotsky made ISIS look like Mother Teresa, but they were clearly cut from the same cloth: sociopaths chained to a purely evil ideology who don't care how many people must be murdered to bring about a utopia in which he and his buddies had maximum wealth and ability to harm anyone they pleased.

"Trotsky yielded no points to Stalin in the matter of dealing with anybody who dared to contradict him. It was a trick they both inherited from Lenin"

"...the Russian civil war that turned Trotsky into one of the century's most effective amateur generals also unleashed his capacities as a mass murderer. The sailors at Kronstadt, proclaiming their right to opinions of their own about the Revolution, were massacred on his order"

To defend Trotsky is to defend the ideals of Lenin and Stalin. Choose whichever one: tens of millions die for not conforming to the whims of the socialist dictators.

The differences are minor... the difference being that the pseudo-intellectual claptrap used to justify the brutalities of a super State were better written, more imaginative, when from Trotsky.

He thought Stalin was acting against the spirit of Marx and the proletariat. Precisely why Stalin ultimately consigned him to first internal exile and later external exile. Trotsky's assassination in Mexico in 1940 by an agent of Stalin was because Trotsky had the balls to continue writing and speaking out against Stalin and his non Marxist rule.

Those interested in finding out more about men like Trotsky would do well to read the writings of Dmitri Volkogonov as I can.

To actually present as good the horrific and evil views of Trotsky (presented at Trotsky.net) and defend them at one point, while at another time vilifying WD for praising the glories of the very similar Stalin, shows a little disconnect, IMHO.

RN: I did watch the Trotsky video link you provided. Even both men agreed that Trotsky had more in common with Lenin and Stalin than other wise.

A lot better? I doubt that, had he prevailed instead of Stalin. True, there would have perhaps been less anti-semitism, and perhaps the many millions would have died in land/agriculture reform without them having died for the ethnic reasons they did for under Stalin...

I found his statements of lucidity noted in the video discussion to be quite interesting, and I was not aware of these. However, his practice of state terror and mass killing put these differences with other socialists in perspective, to become more like a lovers' quarrel than any profound difference.

WD has nothing to do with this. Trotsky, as all revolutionaries are complex people. The point is not whether Trotsky was a good humanitarian or not, rather is whether the USSR would have been better with Trotsky or Stalin. Opinion is split.

You have your view, I have mine. I won't be losing any sleep over the debate or the outcome.